MAKING A SPLASH – Composer Tan Dun performs his Concerto for Water Percussion.

"The noblest of the elements is water,” said the Greek poet, Pindar. The musical works in the upcoming Cape Cod Symphony Orchestra concert titled “Water Impressions” all speak to this sentiment.

Water percussion is anything that uses water in producing a sound or anything whose sounds conjures a water image in the listener’s mind. Tan Dun’s Concerto for Water Percussion and Orchestra, performed by guest artist Christopher Lamb, principal percussionist of the New York Philharmonic, features sounds that are created with water by using it as a percussion instrument or by playing instruments in, on, or under the water. The visual focal point of the concerto is several large transparent water basins which are lighted from underneath. The lights illuminate the water and create patterns on the ceiling as the water is “played.” An eclectic assortment of percussion instruments is combined with the element of water to create this concerto of ethereal sounds.

Tan Dun’s Concerto for Water Percussion and Orchestra was written for Christopher Lamb and the New York Philharmonic and premiered by them, under Kurt Masur’s direction, in 1999. Lamb is known for his dynamism and versatility as a performer; his skill as a teacher and designer of percussion instruments. Some of the “instruments” played were newly invented for the occasion by the composer and the soloist.

Tan Dun is a Chinese-American composer best known for his Grammy and Oscar award-winning scores for the movies Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero. Tan Dun’s original compositions were chosen as the official music for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Award Ceremonies and also as the official Sports Demonstration Symbol Music. “Water festivals” in China’s southwestern Yunnan province inspired Tan Dun’s work. A water festival is a religious ceremony of offerings, practiced by an ethnic minority group known as the Dai. This spiritual background is relevant to the concerto – as is the fact that the work was written in memory of Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996), one of Tan Dun’s early mentors for whom water also held a deep symbolic meaning.

“Water is an element you can’t block. You can block land; you can say this is China and this is Russia, but water has no such frontiers. What I want to present . . . is music for listening to in a visual way and watching in an audio way. I want it to be intoxicating. And I hope some people will listen and rediscover the life things, things that are around us but we don’t notice.”

-Tan Dun

The Cape Cod Symphony will also be playing Smetana’s The Moldau, which paints a vivid portrait of a mighty river from source to end. Smetana was the first major nationalist composer of Bohemia. He gave his people a new musical identity and self-confidence by his technical assurance and originality in handling national subjects. In his set of six orchestral works Má Vlast (My Country), Bedřich Smetana paid tribute to the natural beauties and heroic history of his native Bohemia (today’s Czech Republic). Moldau, composed second in the cycle (1874), became the most popular of the six works. It depicts the course of the river Vltava (Moldau), beginning from the two small sources, the cold and warm Vltava, the joining of both streams into one, then the flow of the Vltava through forests and across meadows, through the countryside where light hearted festivals are being celebrated; by the light of the moon a dance of water nymphs takes place; on the nearby cliffs proud castles, mansions, and ruins rise up; the Vltava swirls in the St. John’s rapids, flows in a broad stream as far as Prague; the castle Vyšehrad appears, and finally the river disappears in the distance as it flows majestically into the Elbe.

Later in the program, the CCSO will feature Steve Heitzeg’s Aqua, which commemorates the visionary spirit of ocean explorer, Jacques Cousteau. Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910-1997) was the world’s most prominent explorer of the oceans, which he loved dearly and did everything in his power to protect. American composer Steve Heitzeg paid tribute to Cousteau in this six-minute composition. Imagery from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute will be projected on a screen and synchronized with Heitzeg’s piece.

Fanta-Sea, an aquatic themed mini-symphony created by CCSO’s “Composing Kids,” will also be played by the orchestra. Fifth and sixth graders from the Nathaniel H. Wixon Middle School “Composing Kids” program composed Fanta-Sea, which was then arranged and scored by young people from the “Composing Teens” program. The resulting five-minute symphony is being performed at the upcoming concert, and the two composing groups have the added pleasure of joining the musicians on stage as their work is premiered. Listen for the sounds of the Cape Cod seashore in this musical fantasy.

The concert will close with Claude Debussy’s masterpiece, La Mer, depicting the ocean’s constant variability. The great French poet Charles Baudelaire wrote: “Free spirit, you shall always cherish the sea!” Debussy loved the poetry of Baudelaire, as he loved the painters Turner, Hokusai, and Monet, all of whom created memorable images of the sea. When he published the score of La Mer, he requested that one of Hokusai's prints, “The Hollow of the Wave off Kanagawa,” be reproduced as part of the cover design.

The Cape Cod Symphony Orchestra presents Water Impressions on Saturday, Nov. 1, at 8pm and Sunday, Nov. 2 at 3pm at the Barnstable Performing Arts Center on West Main Street in Hyannis. Tickets range form $23 to $58 and are available on-line at www.capesymphony.org; or call 508-362-1111.